


Conqueror Woman

by Cimmeria



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar)-centric, Firebending & Firebenders, Gen, Japanese Culture, POV Azula (Avatar), Teeth Blackening, The Fire Nation is based off of Japan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25047517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cimmeria/pseuds/Cimmeria
Summary: A short examination of what’s inside Azula’s head, mixed in with traditional Heian-period Japanese culture.
Relationships: Azula & Mai (Avatar), Azula & Ty Lee (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	Conqueror Woman

**Author's Note:**

> I edited this very little, so hopefully it still sounds good in the morning haha

When Azula is five, she produces her first flame. A blue flame befitting of her name, of her heritage. A colored fire such as hers indicates a great and powerful firebender— she is told this countless times. She’s not particularly surprised by it. After all, she was able to forge a strong flame in the palm of her hand months before her brother ever even had weak little sparks dancing over his fingertips. 

When Zuko finally manages, she smiles unabashedly at the ordinary color of it.

***

Her uncut hair had been growing at an incredibly slow rate and hadn’t even reached her thighs by the time summer had stretched fully over the Fire Nation. Her sixth birthday was approaching. Other young girls of the palace traversed through the halls with it well below their ankles by then.

Azula manages to grab a fistful of one unlucky girl’s glossy locks and burns it off. The smell of burnt hair lingers around her for an hour, but she feels no remorse. Even as the girl’s alabaster face paint runs down her cheeks in messy streaks. No girl of her same age should have longer hair, not when Azula is the  _ princess _ !

Later, her mother manages to take one second out of her time with Zuko to scold her for the incident. Azula simply screams her argument. 

Mother then leads a red-faced Azula to her private quarters and gently weaves false hair into hers, piece by piece. The two colors don’t match entirely—original, the color of obsidian, new, a nearly-black shade of brown— but she is content with it for now. It drags on the floor behind her when she walks and it takes an additional hour for the servants to wash than it did before.

***

Almost a year later, she finally discovers that long hair does not agree with firebending (even tied up as it was) and the false locks are left singed and smoking, along with much of her real hair. The state of mastery in which she completed the kata is buried behind embarrassment at the incident.

Her bending instructor actually has the gall to  _ laugh  _ at her. She doesn’t tell Father what happened though, she’ll have to get rid of the insolent man some other way.

She steals a knife from the palace kitchens in the dead of night and brings it, concealed within the sleeves of her robes, to her rooms. In front of a gilded mirror, she shears her hair off and it pools like ink on the carpet around her feet. It sits then blunt at her jaw. Short hair may indicate a woman who has given up on life, but the world will soon know that the princess of the Fire Nation crops her hair because she is a  _ conqueror _ . All the young ladies of her nation will soon follow in her footsteps, regardless.

Any single person who might mention it from then on will find themselves with a bracelet of blackened and blistered skin, the size of a seven-year-old’s hand.

***

Azula is ten when her mother disappears in the night and her brother is not dead. Azula is  _ not _ the new heir apparent to the throne. That quickly changes though, as Zuko manages to get himself banished a year later. Oh, Zuzu, ever the family disappointment.

***

When Azula is right on the verge of thirteen years, she wakes up for the first time with blood between her legs. It’s not her mother who changes the sheets, gently reassures her, and then runs a hot bath in the next room over. It’s a servant who happened to be nearby. 

She wonders briefly if her mother would have even bothered, then dismisses the thought and promptly lights the stained bedsheet on fire in anger. The servants rush to put it out. 

The baggy Hakama that are brought for her to change into are dyed a deep red. They are to go under her robes for the next several days, the woman explains, to hide any evidence.

Azula discovers that she likes wearing pants more than she does skirts. Armor is going to be even better.

***

It’s less than a week later when a new servant comes into her bathing room with a cup of black dye cradled between her hands. Lifts Azula’s upper lip between two fingers and begins painting her teeth as the other attendants keep busy with washing her hair.

_ It’s sticky. _

_ It tastes bad _ , she says.

_ Having black teeth is a sign of beauty, princess. It’s a great tradition. You should be proud that you are finally old enough for it. _

Azula wrinkles her nose, darts a hand up to the servant woman’s wrist and shoves it away from her face. A viscous bead of black dye droops slowly from the delicate brush and falls onto Azula’s robes.

The world bends to  _ her _ will. Not the other way around.

_ I don’t want it. _

_ But, princess— _

Azula snarls and yanks the cup from her hand. It shatters on the floor, inky dye spattering like some sick animal’s innards.

The servant bows with a wobbly lip and leaves.

Late that night, Azula pushes back her bed covers and creeps over the tile floor with bare feet, dark room lit up with the glow of a blue fire. She looks in the mirror, peeling her lips back with her fingers into a monstrous kind of smile. Her back left molars are all that were left white. 

But no matter. She knows it isn’t permanent.

***

Azula counts the days, the weeks.

Mai is the first to appear alongside Azula with white teeth rather than black. Not surprising. When Azula looks close, fingers nimble under Mai’s lips, she can see black dye remaining still in the crevices between each tooth, slick and shiny with saliva.

Ty Lee follows her lead. 

It ends up being good for both of them. Mai finally receives some much-needed attention from her parents and Ty Lee can now consider herself different from all her siblings. Azula is happy that she’s done them both a favor.

Young daughters around the palace wear white teeth now. It’s fashionable. Older women still bear the sooty blackness, though, as it has become a stain with time. Her mother’s teeth were black.

Azula smiles. She’s killed a tradition.

***

Another year passes, and Azula finally does what none of her forefathers or her stupid uncle or her traitor brother could  _ ever _ do.

The throat of the Earth Kingdom is under her heel. 

She is going to live in history.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading!! Comments make my day :)


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